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there are many answers, with various justifications.. take a look for yourself if you're interesting, its a very very well known riddle.

But someone above mentioned the crux of it, it depends on your perception and definition of what the word sound entails. Then theres the debate of the unobserved vs the observed world, and of course, if a tree fell in a forest, and no one ever heard it, did it really ever fall? and so on and so forth. Not going to get very far with this question unfortunately.

Probably some sort of fungus or sharpie. Just try regular soap and water, if it's sharpie it will come right off since the non-polar molecules within the sharpie are breached by the non-polar molecules of the soap unlike water in its self. If it does happen to be fungus than whatever you do, please don't breathe it in for it could be dangerous. A little more detail on what the blue spots look like please.

Then theres the debate of the unobserved vs the observed world, and of course, if a tree fell in a forest, and no one ever heard it, did it really ever fall? and so on and so forth. Not going to get very far with this question unfortunately.

The way I see it, there're only two options: Either separate separate perception with reality or combine them.

If you separate the two, then you can acknowledge that something may exist even if neither you nor anyone you trust has directly observed it. Although this doesn't mean you put any importance to it in your life.

If you combine the two, then you would only acknowledge that something exists if you can either observe it directly or have enough people that you trust to confirm its existence. And still, this doesn't mean it becomes relevant to you.

So going back to the falling tree:

Did it fall if no one ever heard of it? Maybe or maybe not, depending on which of the above two options you choose.

Does it matter? Most likely not, unless you have something to do with that tree or the forrest where it fell.

So i met a new kid, teenager, probably haven't even finished high-school.

And it was kind of shocking hearing him bragging about how the concept of peace are only childish thought, and it's totally justified for mankind to wage war in order to advance new technologies and political/social order, as long as he can be out of conflict zone. He even admitted that it's good to have such selfish thought

Of course if it's just to win an argument, it won't be hard. But i seriously want to tell something that can knock onto his thick skull, that war is not a game like Call of Duty or MoH, where people can run around with cool guns while taking over resources to develop cool technologies

So i met a new kid, teenager, probably haven't even finished high-school.

And it was kind of shocking hearing him bragging about how the concept of peace are only childish thought, and it's totally justified for mankind to wage war in order to advance new technologies and political/social order, as long as he can be out of conflict zone. He even admitted that it's good to have such selfish thought

Of course if it's just to win an argument, it won't be hard. But i seriously want to tell something that can knock onto his thick skull, that war is not a game like Call of Duty or MoH, where people can run around with cool guns while taking over resources to develop cool technologies

Any ideas?

Well, on a ridiculously sick and awful note, if wars weren't waged, what would the world population be nowadays? How would we have coped with shortage of space and food (or resources in general)? From this point of view, wars would be seen as a ridiculously drastic way of halting the exponential growth rate of global population in order to actually help us survive as a whole (and will continue being as effective, until colonizing new planets is viable).

Of course, I don't see it that way, I just once thought of it a bit and thought some people might see it like this. Sure, we never know if X would have happened if we add/remove Y to/from the equation, that's another argument to be had. You know, things like poverty and overall well-being influencing the numbers and other conditions.

Showing the kid he's wrong? Well, as you said, "as long as he can be out of conflict zone". Full-scale wars are long gone by now. There are no longer resources for that. Now it's guerilla warfare, precise strikes, terrorist acts or just nuking the whole damn planet. Half of that could very well endager him quite easily. If he wants to justify those atrocities, he better damn well count himself as a possible casualty to realize what horror it is. If he doesn't, he just talks out of naïvity. How old is he anyway? 15 or so, I guess? I doubt he won't eventually grow out of this belief.

How would we have coped with shortage of space and food (or resources in general)?

Tsk tsk, just because you subtract something from reality, doesn't mean reality is suddenly flipped on its head. Here, you are just making a convenient assumption. For example: if you hadn't posted, that doesn't mean it is impossible for someone else to have posted the point of view.

Arguably its not wars, but a consequence of wars that's at the heart of the question. Just randomly killing people won't just grow ideas (blood is just blood, not a fertilizer). It's lower standards of living and tangible ideals that grow innovation and bring out the good in people; the opposite is also true, commodity grows complacency. War just happens to be a efficientsimplistic reagent when it comes to causing the reaction. But, it is by far the most horribly inefficient one.

Science and technological advance makes version A) more likely when war and research go hand in hand far into the feature. In war researchers risk things, they would otherwise not. A 1% chance to exterminate humankind while searching for the war winning weapon might become an acceptable risk in such situations.
I wonder if he prefers a hot war over cold war when it is fought with weapons of mass destruction. But whats more important, a world of people with his mind set will definitly end up in A).

If it is a formal debate, then the act of unjustified killing by any means would not be acceptable and would be easily based on for this sort of argument.
But to those who selfishly value his own lives (or act like he only care about his own lives), it's just simply hard to let him realise his own stacks in the issue, without going so much on personal attacks...

@Larthak:
I agree that the point you mentioned was brought up quite a lots of time. But while wars killed lots of people, they simply just halt the rate of population growth, not stop them.
For example, Korean war, one of the deadliest one, halted the population of South Korean people for 7 years (If i remember correctly), but it rose by more than double to peak in 40 years time where it (almost) stopped. So even if we have another world war on every peaceful developing country, it will only halt the process for few years, before we still reach peak anyway (the current population of Europe without WW2 will not change much for example).

The main reason for population growth, was due to the high birth rate slowly decrease, but infant mortality quickly drop while life expectancy jump by huge amounts. IF we can control these, we can control the total population. Even China will peak its population soon, and with one-child policy, the population may start to drop like Japan (hopefully)

Err.. just for the record, war does not help solve the population problem.. I'm not sure why anyone would have that idea..

Unfortunately, war is probably not going to go away, and while I don't think its a necessity, I do think the sentiment of forwarding a nations own interests is important. Also, without a doubt, war is often one of the greatest drivers of economic growth; did the US really get out of the great depression until WWII? and so on and so forth It's also not just a question of war of course, war is often an escalation of sorts.. It's about taking a seemingly cruel, selfish/arrogant stance Take the situation in Afghanistan ( not Iraq), what would you have had the U.S government do after 9/11? Look at India - India constantly suffers because it refuses to take a strong stance on militants.

On the other hand, do I condone it? No, of course not. I really don't think things like this ( or life in general tbh) is that simple, that you can just keep a linear view on things. Often you have to be somewhat hypocritical about it. So, on one hand, you can see why war occurs etc. etc. And on the other hand, you can condemn it for the suffering it brings.

Err.. just for the record, war does not help solve the population problem.. I'm not sure why anyone would have that idea..

Wait, nobody said war helps solve the population problem. It only slows the problem, or rather, delays it, as risingstar3110 elaborated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

@Larthak:
I agree that the point you mentioned was brought up quite a lots of time. But while wars killed lots of people, they simply just halt the rate of population growth, not stop them.
For example, Korean war, one of the deadliest one, halted the population of South Korean people for 7 years (If i remember correctly), but it rose by more than double to peak in 40 years time where it (almost) stopped. So even if we have another world war on every peaceful developing country, it will only halt the process for few years, before we still reach peak anyway (the current population of Europe without WW2 will not change much for example).

I wasn't just talking about the world wars or so, first wars were waged millenia ago. Let's not forget that. All those wars must have influenced our population in some way. Recovering from such conflicts must have been a lot more difficult than it would be in the last few centuries. Or am I wrong here?

Wait, nobody said war helps solve the population problem. It only slows the problem, or rather, delays it, as risingstar3110 elaborated.

I wasn't just talking about the world wars or so, first wars were waged millenia ago. Let's not forget that. All those wars must have influenced our population in some way. Recovering from such conflicts must have been a lot more difficult than it would be in the last few centuries. Or am I wrong here?

Yeah, i do remember the quote about 5% of casualties in WW1 is civilians. That number rose to 46% in WW2, and probably more than 90% for future world war 3

This is a computer question that I've had for a while...
I used to use Avast, but I switched to Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), and my questions it thus...
Is MSE as sufficient virus blocker by itself, or is it intended to be used in addition to an official virus blocker?
My HDD is tight for space (Darn that Linux duel boot), and since MSE took up less space then Avast, I swapped them. I use Win XP 32 bit OS.

Is MSE as sufficient virus blocker by itself, or is it intended to be used in addition to an official virus blocker?

If by virus blocker you mean an antivirus, then MSE is as official as any other antivirus. (It is also an antispyware, replacing some of the functions of Windows Defender.) And I've heard that it is inadvisable to have more than one antivirus. Although if you're worried about rootkits, you should use a rootkit scanner.

But it's more important to have multiple layers of defense. This may include keeping up with software updates, having a hardware and/or software firewall (like Windows Firewall), and of course, safer browsing and computing habits (such as using a non-administrative user account, using UAC correctly, being careful on what websites you visit and/or links you click on, etc.).